The Vatican has launched its own
YouTube channel. It’s being called “PopeTube.” One of the goals of this column
is to help Catholics to live their faith “at the Pope’s side” by understanding
what he’s up to each week.

There’s no better way to do that
than to share this resource that allows you a view at Vatican events. Find a
good one to share with the family.

Parish

BlackfriarsRep.org is the site
for the Blackfriars Repertory Theater.

Feb. 16 is the feast of St.
Onesimus. He is the slave on whose behalf St. Paul wrote the New Testament
Letter to Philemon, a moving tribute to Christian kindness.

At St. Mary’s Church in New Haven,
Conn., parishioners recently got a preview of a play about St. Paul, directed
by Magnificat Editor Father Peter John
Cameron. The play, by Father Harry Cornelius Cronin, was called “Keeper of the
Fire” and starred Dana Sachs as St. Paul.

The plot: St. Paul describes his
conversion and the interior “wound” he carries to Onesimus. The play won’t be
available for most to see, though it does plan to travel in a very limited way.

But dramatic performances are a good
way to drum up interest in the parish. The Venerable Michael McGivney made them
a central part of his outreach program in this very same church before founding
the Knights of Columbus.

The first reading shows how those
with leprosy became literal outcasts. The rest of the readings apply that
concept to our own lives.

The second reading, from St. Paul,
makes it clear that we don’t become “unclean” from anything outside of us
anymore. But we do become “unclean” from sin. Sinners ostracize themselves in
much the same way that lepers were ostracized. The Psalm shows the longing we
have for freedom from our sin. The Gospel shows where that freedom can be found
— in Christ.

Is this all just a lesson in
biblical symbolism and esoterica? No, it’s supposed to teach real lessons about
our spiritual life: Sin is foul and ugly.

My children delight at the story of
Christina the Astonishing, the Belgian holy
woman who “could not stand the odor of other people because she could smell the
sin in them and would climb trees or buildings, hide in ovens or cupboards, or
simply levitate to avoid contact.” Clearly, that’s not the right way to respond
to sinful humanity — the Fatima children had the same kind of sensitivity to
sin, and it caused them to want to suffer for sinners, not flee them.

But
it does drive home the fact that the state of sin isn’t a neutral condition.

We’ve
all broken rules and gotten caught. But that’s not the same as being in sin.
The feeling we get when being pulled over for speeding, for instance, can be
intense: Regret, embarrassment, shame. But when we wrong someone we love, we
get regret and shame, plus something else: disgust with ourselves and a
helpless sorrow at our own inability to heal the rift.

When
it’s God we offend, that rift is deeper, and the consequences are greater than
we can imagine. Being in sin isn’t just embarrassment at breaking a rule, but
something like a defilement. We have turned this most fundamental relationship
inside out. Sometimes a feeling of disgust accompanies it; sometimes it
doesn’t. The feeling can be deceiving: It can mislead us to “feel” sinful when
we’re not or to feel fine when we’re not.

What
matters is the objective matter of our sin. We can test that out in the
confessional, where Christ is ready and able to heal us with his touch.